StarCraft's Most Controversial Player Gets Kicked Off His Team

Greg "IdrA" Fields, a professional StarCraft player well known in the community for getting way too angry when he loses games, was booted from his team Evil Geniuses yesterday. Evil Geniuses, one of the biggest and most successful groups in the world of competitive video gaming, gave IdrA the boot for a comment he made on an internet forum earlier this week. In response to a question, the longtime StarCraft veteran had cursed out a fan.

"Nope you're all a bunch of fucks," he wrote on Wednesday night. "It just so happens I get paid to treat you like it. It's fucking awesome."

For quite some time now, many have criticised IdrA for having a negative attitude toward other players and fans within the StarCraft community, but he has always been a fixture of the competitive scene surrounding Blizzard's popular strategy game, which has become a multimillion dollar industry across the world. But for Evil Geniuses, this was one nasty comment too many.

"After having him on our roster for nearly three years, we have decided to release IdrA from the Evil Geniuses StarCraft 2 team," wrote Evil Geniuses CEO Alexander Garfield on the team's website yesterday.

"We have strict guidelines that regulate certain kinds of more extreme speech, and we take disciplinary action when those guidelines aren’t followed, but for the most part, we stay out of the way... This is why it was never really an issue for us that Greg can be rude to his opponents in games, or that he usually speaks his mind very bluntly and directly. But, to us, there’s a very big difference between a player being disrespectful to an opponent in a ladder match, and a player being disrespectful to the entire community of people who, via their own enthusiasm and passion for the entertainment product he creates, actually make his profession possible.

"The eSports industry, and companies like Evil Geniuses, would not be possible without the passion and support of our community. We, as a company, cannot and will not be supportive of anyone who does not show due respect and appreciation for the community that makes everything we do possible."

This is major news in the world of StarCraft. Teams like Evil Geniuses are the lifeblood for professional eSports players: they pay out salaries, help players train, and generally keep everything organised for veterans' day-to-day life.

While some fans can't stand IdrA's bad manners and perpetually negative attitude, others have defended him over the years. Many of his friends and fellow players reacted emotionally to the news last night: Evil Geniuses teammate Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson was particularly affected.

Longtime StarCraft personality Sean "Day9" Plott took to his YouTube channel to react to the news:

Players like this person do not deserve their place in professional gaming. He is a cancer that needs to be cut, and he has. I hope he stays that way and no one adds him. No one needs a "gaming badass" or something. I don't watch Starcraft 2, but I can't stand ragers or bullies in pro gaming. Heck, just idiots in general. There's no place for it, there.

I think the attitude needs to be cut, not the player. Anyone can find themselves in a bad emotional state, and sometimes action is the only language one can understand. Being removed from one of the team will be a wake up call.

No one ever has a responsibility to an intrusive fan. An actor doesn't need to answer to the beck and call of a fan if they're at lunch or at the gym etc. Is there something wrong with you? Because you seem to not know what it is. I'll gove you a hint; it's what idrA did and not what most actors do to idiot fans.

of course no one has a responsibility to fans and yes a lot of fans push it to far but there's no need for anyone (celebrity or not) to be an asshole to people all the time. plenty of celebrities are rude to fans and while some deserve it plenty of them don't. without fans these people wouldn't be anything so showing a bit of gratitude would be the right thing to do.

As usual people love to take things out of context, someone made a smartass comment about the topic of gaming personalities being more important than abilities and Idra make a snarky joke/comment in response. Watch his interview here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUf2tRAwMcY. I wish websites like kotaku would write up a proper article rather than using out of topic comments to generate page views.

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